Orphan X

30 The Calling Song

Morena’s aunt, a block of a woman ensconced in multiple layers of nightwear, opened the door but addressed Evan through a locked security screen. Fair enough, given that it was just past six in the morning, the stars holding their radiance even through the lightening sky.

She lived not in Vegas proper but in a cluster of trailer homes in a low-end district of Henderson, the neighboring city. Fastening the sash on her bathrobe, she drew her head back even farther behind the ledge of her bosom. “Morena? She is not here.”

“I know that you want to protect her, ma’am,” Evan said. “But she’s not safe right now. I’m—”

“I understand who you are.”

“Do you?”

Her impassive eyes gave off only an obsidian gleam. “Perhaps. But that doesn’t change the fact that I know nothing.”

“Can you at least tell me if they arrived here safely?” Evan asked. “Her and Carmen?”

One lonely cricket was at it in the cluster of dead shrubs at the property line, shrilling its calling song at the dead desert air.

Evan’s gaze lowered to a battered trumpet case lying beside a pile of footwear. Noting his stare, Morena’s aunt cinched the door shut another few inches, restricting his line of sight, her bulk filling the gap. Thin blue veins streaked her pronounced upper eyelids. Her mouth, frozen in a downturned expression, seemed at once maternal and stern, the combat mask of a roused mama bear.

“Wherever she is, she is safe,” she said.

“Ask her to call me. She knows my number. Please.”

“She is safer not being found.”

“I don’t believe that’s so,” Evan said.

“You are entitled to your opinion,” she said, and closed the door gently in his face.

He stood in the morning chill, him and the mateless cricket beneath the wide-open vault of the Nevada sky. He had a laptop in the trunk and could access the databases remotely, maybe pull phone records from the house and go from there. It would be a long investigative slog, running down leads and hitting dead ends.

Time he did not have right now, given the threat to Morena.

He started to walk away when he heard a child’s whistle — not a whistle at all, in fact, but a whooshing of air through pursed lips. A side window rattled open, and a small form tumbled out, landing gracefully in a manner that suggested that the move had been tested a time or two.

The little girl straightened up and dusted off her knees. Carmen, Morena’s eleven-year-old sister. Over her jeans she wore a dirty Disney nightgown with what looked like a blue Popsicle stain down Minnie’s face.

“I know you,” she said in a hoarse whisper. “You’re the one who helped us. Mr. No-Place Guy.”

Evan came around the side of the house, the baked lawn hard underfoot. Though out of view from the front door, he lowered his voice. “Morena’s gone?”

“She left the third day we was here. We went out to get groceries, and I noticed a man noticing us. I’m good at that.”

Evan remembered Carmen with her crayons in the corner booth at Benny’s Burgers, watching him through the window. “I know you are,” he said. “Can you tell me where she went?”

“She got scared. She said if someone was watching, it had to do with whatever let us leave L.A. That she had to go into hiding ’cuz if she stayed with me, it wouldn’t be safe for me. When we got back from the grocery store that night, she snuck out the window.” Carmen rested her hand on the base of the open frame she’d just jumped through, her face lost to thought.

“Do you have a number I can reach her at?”

“She’s freaked out. Too scared to use a phone, anything. She thinks that’s how they followed her, by her phone. Like how the bad man in L.A. used to keep track of her. She said she won’t use one no more. No matter what.”

“So you’ve seen her since?”

“Two times.” Carmen held up two fingers. “She came to see me at the school playground.” She gestured up the dark block. “You can see it from far away, so if I sit on the swings at recess she can tell if it’s safe to come up to me or not. There’re lotsa kids around and stuff.”

Her aunt’s voice wafted out the open window, calling her to breakfast. Carmen glanced nervously at the sill behind her. “I gotta go.”

“Did she tell you if she found someone else? She was looking for someone else. For me.”

“No. She didn’t say anything about that.” Carmen chewed her lower lip. “If you saved us, then how come I can’t be with her?”

Again the aunt’s voice floated through the window. “¡Carmen! Ven aquí. Tu desayuno está listo.”

Evan crouched, bringing himself to her eye level. “Listen to me. I have to see her. Her life depends on it. Go to your swings at morning recess and wait for her. Tell her to meet me in the Bellagio Casino at the restaurant overlooking the dancing fountains. I will be there at noon today. I’ll stay there all day, tonight, however long it takes for her to get there.”

Carmen rocked back on her heels, literally taken aback by his intensity. “Okay. Okay. But I don’t know if she’ll come today. Or tomorrow. Or when.”

“I’ll wait. Tell her it’s safe there. Lots of people, cameras everywhere. Can you remember this?”

Already Carmen was scrambling for the window. “I’ll wait for her at recess, lunch, after school. I’ll remember. I swear.”

She landed inside and shoved down the pane just as her aunt opened the bedroom door and began chiding her for not listening. Evan hustled back to his car, parked up the street.

He had a lot to do before noon.